CLAIM ME, DON のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 101 - チャプター 108

Luca named his number on a Monday.It was fair and we both knew it was fair and there was no negotiation required on that specific point, which was its own kind of respect between two people who had worked together long enough to understand what the thing between them was worth and what it wasn't worth complicating with games.I called him back on Tuesday with my terms and he listened to all of them without interrupting, which was Luca's version of approval, and when I finished he was quiet for a moment and then he said the terms were acceptable and I said good and we agreed to meet with the lawyers on Thursday.I told Dante the number on Tuesday evening at dinner.He looked at me steadily across the table for a moment and then he nodded once and said what do you need from me and I told him and he said all right and we ate the rest of dinner and talked about other things and that was the entire conversation, which was exactly the right length for it to be.Thursday arrived and we went

Marco announced he was cooking on a Friday afternoon without asking anyone if this was something they wanted. He sent a message to the estate at two o'clock that said I am bringing ingredients and Isadora and dinner is handled, do not let Elena interfere, which was the kind of message that required no response because there was no version of events where any of those things did not happen exactly as stated. He arrived at four with two bags of groceries and Isadora and the energy of a man who had committed to something and was not going to be moved from it regardless of what the evidence suggested about his actual cooking ability. Elena appeared in the kitchen doorway when Marco began unpacking the bags, looked at the specific combination of ingredients he had assembled, looked at Dante, looked at me, made a decision that this was not her concern this evening, and went to the sitting room with her book and closed the door. Wise woman. Isadora and I sat at the kitchen table with win

The meeting was on Thursday at two.Lorenzo Voss's club sat in the older part of the city where the buildings were all pale stone and tall windows and the kind of architecture that communicated wealth by never mentioning it. Dante told me on the drive over that Lorenzo had chosen the club rather than his office, which was itself a deliberate choice, the club being the territory where Lorenzo felt entirely himself and visitors were intended to feel slightly less so.I wore the black dress.The one Dante had chosen for the first dinner party with the allied family heads, the one I had been wearing when I read a table of six powerful men before the first course arrived and held my own through three courses and a possessive hand at my back and a slow smile from Rafael that had stayed at my neck for the rest of the night.That dress had done something before and I needed whatever it carried.Dante noticed when I came downstairs and said nothing and offered his arm.We were shown to the tab

I asked him on a Wednesday morning.Not planned and not because anything had led directly to it. He had mentioned the visit in passing, the way he mentioned it every month, brief and factual and not inviting anything, and this time I looked up from my coffee and said I would like to come with him if that was something he was willing to consider.He looked at me across the breakfast table.The silence that followed was not an uncomfortable one but it was long, longer than his silences usually went, and I waited in it and did not fill it because this was the kind of question that needed whatever time it needed."Yes," he said finally.Just that.We drove out on Thursday afternoon, an hour north of the city on a road that got quieter the further it went from everything, and the facility was low and pale and surrounded by gardens that were tended with the specific care of a place that understood the people inside it couldn't tend things themselves anymore.Dante said almost nothing on the